Eco Dye on a Saturday Morning Walk in the Neighborhood

A break from the Europe trip.  Are you over it ?  Or would you like  to see more?

While we were on a dog walk yesterday, I began to pick up some oak and maple leaves, bark pieces, acorn tops, twigs, walnut hulls -- whatever I could fit into my poop bag.  It was clean, I bought an extra one!  LOL

When I got home, I dug out my aluminum stew pot I found at The Purple Cow and put on some water and vinegar to boil.

I went into the back yard and pulled some Purple Wandering Jew leaves and some Lorapetalum.  The Lorapetalum is a bush that new growth which is purple then the leaves turn dark grey green.

The stew turned a dark dark dark purple.  I was really hoping the fabrics would turn dark purple too  But you know it is all a guessing game as to what happens.

I used two different fabrics, both cottons. Before the flood I had several weights of dupioni silk, but who knows where they are now or if it even survived.  I know where the silks were and that was below the water line.

I rolled the bundles tightly using a cotton cord onto a few sticks from the yard that would fit into the pot, weighted it all down with a big rock (which turned purple) and boiled it for a long time.

When the bundles cooled and I unwrapped their beauteous selves.

Here is the array of all thee pieces.  But let me show you some special interest areas, well, that will be of special interest to you!

This is a gum leaf that was picked off the tree prior to being put in the bundle.  So it was green.  I also put one in the mix that had already fallen and was brown.  I am not sure which one this is.

I need to be more scientific next time.  It would help to know if there is a big difference either way, or if it really doesn't matter either way.

More scientific.

This was an experiment in stay, which failed.  '

Here is the gum leaf section as a whole piece.  It will need definition with using the sewn line, either hand or machine.  Carol does a lot of machine so

I might start there, since I need these by the 27th.

 Oh.  I am using this fabric to make journal covers for the 100 for 100 Show at the Art Council.  Hopefully they will sell there.

If you look closely at the patterns you can make out leaves.  I don't know exactly which one of the larger pieces were the lorapetalum, which was purple and had smaller leaves on a central stem.

But I can see several things that look like it could be them.









If you look deeply into the darker areas on each piece you can see some leaf designs.  The darker areas were the outside pieces.  So if you look at the ombre effect, the lighter areas are the close tight insides of the wrap bundle.

 

 The up and down lines are the string wrap lines.  Shibori, really when you think about it.  I did

Eco Dye Shibori! I might have a new thing!

 

You can definitely see the leaf branch here in the several  shots below.  I was trying to close in on the patterning so you would not miss the wonderful things.  Pleas go back to the top of the page and see if you can find the patterns now that you know what to look for.

Dying From This Chest Cold

So I think I am going to die from coughing.  I feel that is totally possible to do.  Sawyer gave me his cold, or maybe it was Carrie who shared.

We had to put off a birthday dinner Saturday, as I was starting and they were in the middle of the cold.

This was the house yesterday with some snow still sticking to the edge of the roof.  Luckily there was no  interruption in shifts at the shelter.  Everyone made it in  when they were scheduled.  The cats free feed, so they can miss a shift, but the dogs are different.  We have two shifts a day, every day.

I had lunch with Dennis and Frank, since I had to go out for cough syrup anyway.  I found my appetite was not strong, wishing I had some chicken soup.   Of course I didn't think about the chicken soup until I left Target's parking lot and I was feeling too bad to turn around.

Do you remember when I went to  QuiltCon with PattyA?  I took this dyeing class.  I have no idea where any of my stuff went during the flood.  I have been itching to do some dyeing again.  So if I live through this cold, I want to rip up some PFD and do some Shibori dyeing. Maybe there will be a good piece for the Journey theme for CFAL. 

I was talking to Swooze earlier and she was lamenting the number of quilts that need finishing at her house.  She and I have similar problems.  We both are doing OMG, which will get neither of us close to clearing out a backlog.  I was challenging her to a quilting duel when she suddenly heard a pot boiling.........

 I was watching QVC so I wouldn't have to watch the Killer Whales on Blue Planet eat the Dolphins, and I saw the host wearing some jeans with bra buttons at the bottom cuff.  It looked so fun and added a bit of flare to the plain jeans.  I think I have some of those buttons in a jar somewhere from before Carrie was even born.  I might have to sew some on and save some $$.  Considering all they have left is extra small.......But those shoes, ugh!

Shibori Blues

Reveal!

From this:

To this:

These were in the interim:

Then I washed it:

And this happened!

I am working on an Eco-Print.  It is soaking in mordant.  And the sticks are soaking.  I will choose leaves tomorrow and wrap and boil!


Blues Close Up!

Mordant work and a Little Dye Work

I am preparing some fabric with a mordant in order to do some ecobundling.  This time I am doing a strong mordant of soy milk.  I  have read that it is a good protein source to open cotton fibers.  So I had to go to the grocery store anyway (and I forgot dog yogurt so I will have to go again anyway) and I bought soy milk.

Remember my find from the Purple Cow that included the fish duvet?

I dis-assembled the duvet cover and separated the back side into strips about 18 inches wide.  I put a one strip into the soy milk bath.






I took another strip and did a shibori wrap.


 I soak my fabric in plain water but mix my dye with some soda ash.



Mental note:  buy more soda ash..........



Now I am washing it out in my super heated hot water.  This is what I bought the machine for!






 



Of course, I didn't wear gloves...........

Stash Report - Corrected

Well, Patty the Quilt Lady brought up a good point.  I did take the Dye class with Kim Eicher-Messmer and brought that fabric home.

It included two yards of white Kona and a half yard each of green and yellow Kona.   I really need to redo  these photos and iron the pieces.  yes.

Here are my spectacular results:  Which do you like best?

Discharge and Overdyed

Discharged Yellow

White dyed purple

Discharged green kona

Discharged green kona

white dyed teal pink brown

White dyed green pink

White dyed green yellow

white dyed teal pink

clothespin

White dyed teal yellow pink

White dyed stars

Let's try the Dyeing To Be Loved Post Again

Let's try this one more time.  I am still doing something so wrong that I am not figuring out how to  get the Chrome engine up but I am doing something right that I am able to get the Firefox engine and the Mozilla one up just fine.  Go  figure?

I have had a wonderful weekend dyeing.  Last week I purchased a couple of packages of cheesecloth and I already had this wonderful set of Procion Dye Powders and somehow, in my kitchen, they collided and  became beautiful!

I started on Saturday and dyed red, yellow, blue and purple.  i didn't even think about  adding the soda ash and the colors were nice and pale.

While the pieces  were air drying, one of the pieces ended up in a certain little dog's mouth.  I found two strips missing.  After a complete and exhaustive search of the premises, I added peroxide to his  stomach and he threw up the two pieces within minutes.  Crisis averted.  Frank says, maybe I need to get your a clothes line  somewhere.  Ya think?

So today  I dug through my stuff and found a nice huge container of soda ash.  I made dye batches and added about 6 or 7 yards of cheese-y-cloth.  I  also had a few yards of white Kona and set up a  shibori style dye bath and even more wonders came about.

Here is my shibori wrap on a PVC pipe.


 And below are the four dye cups from today's batch with the soda ash.

Here are the results from the first  day, no soda ash.  very light colors but you can definitely see the  red, blue, yellow and that weird red/pink color  on the end. 

Here is the set that McGee took a chunk out of.  See the chunk missing?

Shibori Light!  Nice sky for sure!

And seeing the shibori  with the red right now, I immediately thought  of a sunset on the water!  Maybe a sailboat in there, or an eagle!



Here is part of the second soda ash batch.  Nice, you can really see the colors. Look at those yellows!  Oh my!

 These are some interesting pieces that spent some time in two  different dye baths at one time.  They  "hung" out  over both.  That read on the left is really red and grey or  green maybe.

And to top it all off, one of the pillowcases from Habitat that got a  bit of a shibori  treatment.  Not sure if this is the way it will look or if it gets over-dyed somehow. 

We shall see!